RGSSALibraryCatalogue

Tuesday, 23 October 2012

Following on from the Russian theme:
October 25 is the anniversary of the famous "Charge of the Light
Brigade" during the Crimean War. I had to see what 19th-century books
we've got on the Crimean War or the Crimea in general at the Royal Geographical
Society of South Australia, because the Charge of the Light Brigade raises early
memories for me - I was only about 10 when I discovered an old volume of
Tennyson which I rather think had belonged to Mum's mother, and so dated back
to the turn of the 19th century! Many of the poems were too long and hard for
me but I loved The Charge of the Light
Brigade. It was first published on 9 December 1854 in the Examiner: Tennyson is said to have written
it immediately after reading an account of the battle.

The Charge of the Light Brigade

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

*

Half
a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All
in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

'Forward,
the Light Brigade!

Charge
for the guns' he said:

Into
the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

'Forward,
the Light Brigade!'

Was
there a man dismay'd?

Not
tho' the soldiers knew

Some one had blunder'd:

Theirs
not to make reply,

Theirs
not to reason why,

Theirs
but to do and die:

Into
the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

Cannon
to right of them,

Cannon
to left of them,

Cannon
in front of them

Volley'd and thunder'd;

Storm'd
at with shot and shell,

Boldly
they rode and well,

Into
the jaws of Death,

Into
the mouth of Hell

Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd
all their sabres bare,

Flash'd
as they turned in air

Sabring
the gunners there,

Charging
an army while

All the world wonder'd:

Plunged
in the battery-smoke

Right
thro' the line they broke;

Cossack
and Russian

Reel'd
from the sabre-stroke

Shatter'd
and sunder'd.

Then
they rode back, but not

Not
the six hundred.

Cannon
to right of them,

Cannon
to left of them,

Cannon
behind them

Volley'd and thunder'd;

Storm'd
at with shot and shell,

While
horse and hero fell,

They
that had fought so well

Came
thro' the jaws of Death,

Back
from the mouth of Hell,

All
that was left of them,

Left of six hundred.

When
can their glory fade?

O
the wild charge they made!

All the world wonder'd.

Honour
the charge they made!

Honour
the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred!

(The
picture is Richard Caton-Woodville's "Charge of the Light Brigade",
one of the many British paintings which commemorate the Battle of Balaclava.)

The
Charge took place on 25 October 1854. It was a disastrous defeat for the
British, the sort of defeat the British do tend to memorialise. It was a
cavalry charge led by Lord Cardigan against the Russian guns at Sebastopol,
during the Battle of Balaclava. "Lord Raglan, overall commander, had
intended to send the Light Brigade to pursue and harry a retreating Russian
artillery battery near the front line, a task well suited to light cavalry. Due
to miscommunication at some level in the chain of command, the sabre-armed
Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault into a different artillery
battery, one well-prepared with excellent fields of defensive fire. Although
reaching the battery under withering direct fire and scattering some of the
gunners, the badly mauled brigade was forced to retreat immediately, producing
no decisive gains and very high British casualties." (Wikipedia; you can
read a detailed account at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade
).

"Charge of the Light Cavalry Brigade, 25th Oct. 1854, under Major General the Earl of Cardigan",
by William Simpson, 1855, a lithographic print held by the Library of Congress

The British and Russians were engaged in a huge struggle for world domination (very like something out of a James Bond epic, yes) during the 19th century. For part of the time it was covert and of course they were allies during the Napoleonic Wars, but nevertheless the rivalry continued, with the Russians trying to dominate Afghanistan and Central Asia, and the British trying to stop them and take over Afghanistan themselves whilst consolidating their power in the Indian subcontinent: it was this struggle that gave rise to what Kipling was to call "the Great Game", which he used for the cat-and-mouse spying and counter-spying in the region, though its meaning has been broadened to encompass the entire political struggle between the two powers. The Crimean War (October 1853 - February 1856) was the biggest overt flare-up of this rivalry.

Two of the RGSSA's books on the Crimean War are:

Russell,
William Howard, Sir, 1820-1907.

The British expedition to the
Crimea / by W.H. Russell. Rev.
ed. London ; New York : G. Routledge & Co, 1858.

Not
one of those English stiff-upper-lip military sirs, but one of the earliest war
correspondents! W.H. Russell was a fascinating character, the sort of man who
got on well with the lower ranks and was disdained by such as Lord Raglan. (As
Raglan was responsible for the order to the Light Brigade to charge the guns,
guess who comes best out of that?) Russell was out in the Crimea for 22 months
covering the war, including the Charge of the Light Brigade. His dispatches
from the front alerted the British public to the appalling conditions suffered
by the soldiers, particularly the wounded, and illuminated the whole subject of
the brutality and waste of war. "Shocked and outraged, the public's
backlash from his reports led the Government to re-evaluate the treatment of
troops and led to Florence Nightingale's involvement in revolutionising
battlefield treatment." (Wikipedia). Russell's subsequent career was equally exciting: in 1856 he was sent to Moscow to describe the coronation of Tsar Alexander II. Next came a journey to India to report on the Indian Mutiny (the Sepoy Rebellion, 1857-1859), where he witnessed the final re-capture of Lucknow by the British in 1858. In 1861 Russell went to Washington, later publishing his account of his experiences during the American Civil War. Next he reported on the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). In July 1865 he sailed on the "Great Eastern" to document the laying of the Atlantic Cable. In addition to his newspaper reports he published numerous books based on his journals.

His appeal as a person is best shown in
Punch's 1881 cartoon of him. His tremendous success in his career was rewarded
by a knighthood - highly unusual when you consider that not only was he someone
whom the aristocrats like Lord Raglan considered not nice to know, he was also
an Irishman!

Sandwith, Humphry, 1822-1881.

A narrative of the Siege of Kars and of the
six months' resistance by the Turkish garrison under General Williams to the
Russian army : together with a narrative of travels andadventures in Armenia and Lazistan ; with
remarks on the present state of Turkey. 3rd ed. London : J.
Murray, 1856.

In the Crimea
the British Army fought alongside their allies the French and Turkish armies. In
1855 a little-known but serious siege took place in the eastern corner of
Turkey. The British were giving assistance to the Turkish Army at the siege of
Kars. In present-day Turkey, Kars has a stormy history: after withstanding a
siege by the Persians in 1731 and successfully resisting the Russians in 1807, it
fell to the Russians in 1828. It fell again in 1855: the Ottoman garrison led
by British officers including General William Fenwick
Williams did keep the Russians at bay; but the garrison was
devastated by cholera and food supplies were depleted, and the town was
surrendered to General Mouravieff in November 1855. Sandwith was the regimental
doctor with the Royal Regiment of Artillery in the Crimea.

Probably
most of us today who have heard of the Crimea associate it with the war
involving the British and Russians. But in fact the area was recognised at that
period as a place of outstanding natural beauty, as the following volume of
lithographs bears witness:

Bossoli, Carlo, 1815-1884.

The
beautiful scenery and chief places of interest throughout the Crimea / from
paintings by Carlo Bossoli. London : Day, 1856.

"Mount Tchatyr-Dagh".
(About 5,200 feet high. Seen from the path leading to the top of Mount Demed-Gi.)

The artist
Carlo Bossoli (1815-1884) is known for landscapes, urban views, and historical
and military paintings. He was born in Davesco, Italy, but his family emigrated
to Odessa when he was young. At 18 years old he sold his first works. In 1845
he returned to Italy, but continued to work across Europe. At the time of the
Crimean War views showing the straits of the Bosporus and the towns and forts
associated with battles such as Balaklava and Sebastopol were much in demand in
England.

"The Arsenal Harbour, or Military Port, Sebastopol".
(Foreground, old ships of the line, used as prisons; right, the Marine Barracks;
left, part of the town of Sebastopol.)

Bossoli's
paintings of the Crimea were very successful in London, and he exhibited at the
Royal Academy between 1855 and 1859. In addition to many scenes of the
landscape of the Crimea in the 1850s, the pictures include views of the city of
Sevastopol' (Sebastopol, as it was then known), and depictions of the way of
life, dwellings and costume of the Crimean Tatars (or Tartars).

One particularly striking image is a scene at
Inkerman:

Ïnterior of an Early Christian Church".
(Excavated in the Rock of Inkerman.)

In British
reference sources the name Inkerman is remembered as that of the Battle of
Inkerman (1854) during the Crimean War, but the battle was actually fought some
distance away from the small town of Inkerman, across the river on a nameless
ridge between the Tchernaya River and the Careenage Ravine. Today Inkerman is
virtually a suburb of Sevastopol', only 5K east of the city, with a population of
only just over 10,000. It was of course even smaller back then. Its chief
feature is the great rocky outcrop above the river, where in the 8th century a
cave monastery of St. Clement was founded by Byzantine icon-worshippers fleeing
persecution.

In
spite of the continuing bad relations with the Russian bear, the lion-like
British went out to the Crimea regardless throughout the 19th century. Even on
"sporting" expeditions (huntin', shootin 'and fishin', by George!). Though
as Queen Victoria and her family maintained a close association with the Tsar's
family, perhaps it isn't so surprising after all. So amongst the RGSSA's relics
of Empire we find:

An account of a visit early in the
century by an intrepid woman traveller:

Holderness, Mary.

New Russia : journey from
Riga to the Crimea, by way of Kiev : with some account of the colonization, and
the manners and customs of the colonists of New Russia : to which are added,
notes relating to the Crim Tatars. London : Printed for
Sherwood, Jones and Co., 1823.

And these three on the Crimea
after the war. Firstly, one from the 1870s:

Telfer,
John Buchan, d. 1907.

The Crimea and Transcaucasia : being the
narrative of a journey in the Kouban, in Gouria, Georgia, Armenia, Ossety,Imeritia, Swannety, and Mingrelia, and in the
Tauric range. London : H. S. King & co., 1876.

And two from
the 1880s.

Marvin,
Charles, 1854-1890.

The region of the eternal fire : an account
of a journey to the petroleum region of the Caspian in 1883. London :
W.H. Allen, 1884.

Phillipps-Wolley,
Clive, Sir, 1854-1918.

Sport in the Crimea and Caucasus.
London : Richard Bentley & Son, 1881.

Yes, by now the Crimea's
the scene of jolly good sport - ironic, isn't it?

Such works
afford us, alongside the travels in the Crimea, tantalising glimpses of a way
of life and its attitudes which are long gone. How well the travelogue comes
over depends on the skill of the writers! But we can actually see the Crimea as
it was, in the 19th-century equivalent of the TV colour documentary, Bossoli's
volume of tinted lithographs:

"The Grotto of Yursurf".
(In the background, Mount Aya Dagh.)

"Sebastopol from the Northern Forts".

I wonder how
many of the well-to-do English who trotted along to the Royal Academy to see
Bossoli's pictures, and who could afford the big volume of lithographs,
contrasted their beauty with Russell's descriptions of the bloody battles in
the Crimea, and reflected bitterly upon the folly and waste of war? Not to say
on Lord Raglan's stupidity, flinging light cavalry against the guns.

It’s 158
years since the charge of the Light Brigade. Perhaps Tennyson's style is too
florid for modern tastes. But whilst the poem seems typically Victorian to us,
in the way it stresses the soldiers' gallantry and heroism whilst never
wondering if the British even had a right to be in the Crimea, it does also
show the waste of war: